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I have to say that I don't really have an issue with the enzyme itself (yet...I'll have to do more reading), but any time a company does dishonest **** it bothers me. I could see some fun uses for the stuff (beefturduckork steak anybody? ), but you'd have to be being up front about it IMO.

Great. They always say that you should never say "things can't possibly get worse".

If this is true, how do I check that my cows aren't undergoing such things? I can't ask my butcher if my meat was anally probed.

I hate unnecessary torture happening to my food. As though killing them to eat them wasn't bad enough.

Why can't you ask your butcher if your meat was anally probed? Part of his job is knowing stuff like that.

Getting ethical or natural or generally speaking meat that works for you is something that has different solutions everywhere. Part of it is it depends on the consumer. Some people just don't want additives in their meat for health reasons, some people just want the animals to be raised with respect and treated well, some are a mix of both. The best solution is probably to get to know a farmer, but that's not very practical for many. Really the only way to go about it is to get to know your butcher, and if he can't reassure you that the meat you're buying is what you want, get a new butcher.

I also strongly recommend doing a bit of reading on the subject. A few excellent books cover this sort of stuff, I liked The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan, but a bunch of other titles like Food Inc or The End of Food are pretty decent as well.

For me, the solution to the good meat problem ended in a butcher shop that's actually an outlet for a bunch of regional Mennonite farms. There's a pretty big Mennonite community within 50-100 kilometers of Toronto, and they raise their livestock in ways that appeal to me for religious/social reasons. Plus it's really close to my house, bonus.

Ok, so is it bad that all day I was constructing a "quilted steak" in my head after reading this? There's a part of me that wants to just chunk up some beef, chicken, pork, and a few other meats, mix them up with some meat glue and cut it into crazysteaks.....Smoke 'em or sous vide maybe...I dunno, I can't get this out of my head

Ok, so is it bad that all day I was constructing a "quilted steak" in my head after reading this? There's a part of me that wants to just chunk up some beef, chicken, pork, and a few other meats, mix them up with some meat glue and cut it into crazysteaks.....Smoke 'em or sous vide maybe...I dunno, I can't get this out of my head

The only way, Tristan, is to buy locally. It isn't as cheap, but that is America's secret to success. We only spend like 15% of our incomes on food, whereas most countries spend about 45%. We live in big houses, drive big cars, and eat garbage. But if you get your meat from a local source, typically they are already personally invested in providing humane and healthy food, but you can always just go look for yourself!

Query: How could you take random chunks of beef, dump some extract of pig-blood glue on them, roll them up in plastic, refrigerate them for 24 hours, then slice them into something that an experienced meat eater would think is tenderloin? Wouldn't the grain of the meat be going every which way? Wouldn't it still be as tough as the original chunks of meat? Or does the glue somehow alter the texture of the meat itself? Besides, it might actually have flavor, giving away the fact that it's not real tenderloin.

I hate misleading consumers. But that is the nature of the beast. It's sad to say but there are many and i mean many restaurants that pull dirty **** just to try to make a buck. It's disgusting and insulting to the people who actually have a passion for culinary arts.

With that said, meat glue is basically an enzyme. Once this enzyme comes into contact with certain amino acids, basically lysine and glutamine, it forms an adhesive bond with the surfaces much like a glue does. All forms of meat contain more than enough lysine and glutamine to cause this reaction to take place.

I've used meat glue before. It's an amazing product, much like a lot of the other molecular gastronomy magic powders. I've made pasta from shrimp (a la wylie dusfrane), casing-less and egg-less sausage, deboned a whole chicken except for one drummette and pressed it all together so you get all white and dark meat mixed together. The possiblities are endless, but you really have to make sure that you are cooking the products with the same temperature guidelines as if the protein was solid. It's the reason why meat glue and sous vide go hand in hand some times.

here is the thing about this. selling someone scraps as a tenderloin cut is wrong and its stealing. people shouldnt have to be taken advantage of because of their ignorance.

that said, this video is a classic example of news making something completely outrageous out of something not a big deal. many of the finer restaurants use meat adhesives. the part about not breathing it in because its dangerous stuff is just silly. dusfrane at WD-50 and other chefs use this all the time for multiple applications. i use a similar product where i work called activa rm. it acts the same way. so if we break down a goat and have two small tenderloins that weigh out to 4oz, we can turn them into an 8oz portion. the same can be done with halibut cheeks and other under-weight portions.

all in all, i dont care to use all this new age fancy crap that chefs pay top dollar to add to their organic ingredients which also cost more just to look like the guys at moto, wd-50, and *choke* iron chef america, but some things have some practical uses. i dont use it at home but believe that its one of the few acceptable products in a professional environment. the problem i have with the video is someone saying that its a tenderloin cut when its scraps glued together. that is wrong.

Meat glue

Have any of you guys used this stuff? I have to say it totally intrigues me and scares me at the same time. I want to try the stuff out but I'm not sure how I would feel if a restaurant fed me meat that was glued together. Does anyone want to send me a few ounce so I don't have spend a 100 bucks just to satisfy my curiosity?